I can assure you, it's not the shirt or the shorts that have beaten us against Bournemouth or Fulham, it was the other fellas ...
Let's put it in perspective, this time in January we were wondering about the new owner and how he was making us a feeder club for his Belgian club and the forcing by him of our legendary manager to use frankly park footballers.
Roll the clock on to October and we have suffered our only second defeat of the season and we are not only in contention for the play offs but who would have thought we would be only 4 points off first place. We have a new team of players with limited British football experience, which when you consider the difference in European and English style does beg the question of how the hell we have got where we are?
I neither like or dislike Duchatalet, he is an owner for a short part of our history, as most future owners will be. His objective is to make money out of his network and the only way to do that is to bring success. Liege and Charlton are the jewels who could bring big bucks through champions league and being a member of the money machine of the premier league.
Duchatalet is no fool, he is not going to go hell for leather for either if his objectives, I fully expect him to build slowly and carefully. Let us not forgot that when Murray opened the purse not just using existing funds but also future funds we plunged down the table to eventually steady at 13th in League 1.
Bob says that Duchatalet is happy to have 22 points and in our hearts most of us probably are too, however the question is and where we diverge from Duchatelet is whether we have enough resources to maintain that 4 point gap over the next 10.games, it seems a tall order with the thinness of the squad.
What we can't deny is that the starting 11 when fit is the best we have had in the championship for many years. Vetokele, Gudmonson and Buyens were all missing yesterday, how many other championship teams could have afforded to lose that quality?
Between now and January the two most important parts of the club are going to be us the fans who need to be realistic, patient and supportive as well as not digging out the youth players and the medical team, who are going to have to patch this team together and keep them playing.
3 comments:
I like this balanced analysis. At the beginning I think most supporters would have settled for a mid table finish this season. It's also natural to now have raised expectations and a shame (IF) a good first eleven fail to really push the club on. The conundrum, the best way to avoid becoming a feeder club or having to sell our resources. Answer. Investment + performance = growth = profit. Agree all this cannot to be achieved overnight. Has the manager utilised all his assets, example, CH SC ? Conclusion. Shame to drop points by being a couple of players short! Time only will tell us.
Keep the faith, COYR!
I've seen 3 Charlton wins this season, yet in many ways I thought we didn't play as well in any of those games as we did v. Fulham in the second half. In particular I thought Cousins looked far better further back in midfield than on the wing. We actually had the bulk of the possession! But we didn't score and lost. Role reversal!
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